Good Advice from Our Lord and Savior

How does Jesus tell us to think about our physical needs:

Matthew 6:25-34  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear.   Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds in the sky;  they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are not you more important than they?   Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?   Why are you anxious about clothes?  Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.  They do not work or spin.  But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.   If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?  So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’  All these things the pagans seek.  Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.  Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

In life we need food for our bodies to live but Jesus tells us:

John 6:35  “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

In life we need water for our bodies to live but Jesus tells us:

John 4:13-14  “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

In life we need rest for our bodies to live but Jesus tells us:

Matthew 11:28-30  “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.   Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves.  For my yoke is easy,  and my burden light.”

In life we need to protect our lives but Jesus tells us:

Luke 17:33 Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.

Are You 100% for God?

There has been quite a bit of talk these days about the folks who fall into the 99% category and the folks in the 1% category - how the 1% own everything and the 99% typically get the dirty end of the stick – and how we need to change this and fight/take back what is rightfully ours.  

However, I think our focus/attention needs to be directed in a more Christian manner.  This gift of life which we live (rich or poor), (sick or healthy) isn’t a battle between the have’s (1%) and have not’s (99%) read Ephesians  6:12 – no it’s a battle between the holy and the unholy.  And unless we understand this important lesson, Mark 12:17, “So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were utterly amazed at him,” we will miss the true purpose and meaning of our lives.

Which brings me back to the subject of this message, are you 100%?  John 12:3-5 tells the story of Mary who “wasted”, according to Judas, expensive oil on Jesus’ feet.  And Acts 5:1-10 where Ananias and Sapphira lay before Peter’s feet the proceeds from the sale of their home, yet lying about the amount. And finally Matthew 27:57-60 when Jesus died on the cross, Joseph of Arimethea asks Pilate for the body and places it in his own new tomb.

Interestingly, Joseph and Mary, were both 100 percenters.  Both Joseph and Mary repaid God in the most excellent manner they could at the time.  Mary literally poured expensive oil all over Jesus’ feet, symbolically however, she was pouring out her heart and love for Jesus completely and unconditionally.  So much so, she was willing to incur the rebuke of Judas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus.   Have you ever been willing to accept humiliation/rebuke for displaying or giving back your love to Jesus?  If so, then your 100%!

Joseph too gave Jesus something very special – his own, brand new tomb.  Joseph did not fear how this action would reflect on him.  He didn’t care if this display of love, affection and respect would hurt or endanger him within his peers or community.  No, Joseph gave Jesus more than just his own tomb, he gave Him his heart and soul too.  Do your actions label you as a Christian?  If so, then your 100%!

Finally, Ananias and Sapphira, sold their home and gave a significant amount of that to Peter for the new and growing Christian community.  On the surface, this was an extremely generous offering.  And when asked about the amount they both lied and told Peter this was the entire amount from the sale while holding back some for just them.  Divinely Peter knew this was a lie and told them so, in so many words, and they both instantly dropped dead on the spot.  They gave a lot but they lied and held back.  Maybe they even gave 99% of their proceeds.  But it was that 1% that caused their early demise.  They were not 100% are you?

When you give back to the Lord – give it all!

Defining My Life

It is interesting how people will ask you for some bit of information about yourself in order for them to, as they believe, define who you are in relation to them – basically, friend or foe, comrade or combatant, colleague or competitor, etc.   I believe it is a mechanism we've cooked up to convince ourselves we are going about the task of relationship building in a proper, logical and intelligent manner. 

However, I personally believe it’s all a bunch of malarkey.   Are you a Democrat or a Republican, do you support this or that, what school did you graduate from, sports fan, like music, do you invest…, do you watch…, did you read…, did you hear about…, what do you think about…, how much do you know about…, etc., etc., etc. 

Do you really want to know who I am?  OK.  I am a follower, right…not a fan, of Jesus Christ…period.  Everything else takes a back seat to that defining characteristic – including husband, father, son, friend, employee, neighbor, and all around good egg.  So what is YOUR next question?  

A Road Not To Be Traveled Alone

This road of faith is not one to be traveled alone.  As Luke 10:1 tells us, Jesus sent the bearers of His" good news" in pairs.  This was true then as it is true today.

We cannot “go it alone” in this world, if we want to be successful in carrying out our mission of spreading the “good news” of Jesus Christ - for Jesus warned them in Luke 10:3, “I am sending you like lambs among wolves”.  So what is a lamb to do without companions on the journey who “got your back”, surely not much.  A wolf is a cunning and powerful animal that would have no problem “taking out” a lone lamb.  Bottom-line, we need companionship in this journey of faith.

Your spouse, family members can be the perfect companions for the journey.  Also, we can find companions for the journey in our church, local prayer groups or even our local Cursillo Ultreya (hint).  

Regardless, don't "go it alone" here on earth.  In Christ we are one body, "make a friend, be a friend, and protect that friend in Christ from the wolves" - as if your life depended upon it. 

Today's Prayer

Lord you are my joy - You alone.  Don’t let me forget.  Keep me always mindful of Your presence and Your gift of life.  Keep me always grateful for Your gifts.  To see, to hear, to breathe, to laugh, to cry, to smile, but most of all - to love.  Teach me to love better, more deeply, more like You.

Humble me Lord.  Make me a servant of Your will.  Only in this way can I live life in a way that is pleasing to You.  Keep me on Your path.  Rescue me when I go astray.  Help me to see the truth.  Help me to speak the truth.  Help me to live the truth.

Today's Thoughts

My life journey thus far has brought me to a place where I realize that we need to focus more on “loving God and each other” than anything else.  This is easy to say but rarely is it lived out.  Simply because, I believe, we have been caged by our desires for other things.  And these cages, in this day and age, are so diabolical.  I believe we are living the words our Savior cried on the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.

I believe Jesus meant this not only as it applied to His crucifixion then, but as well as, to people today.  We have been deceived by Satan and that deception has grown and been compounded over the centuries to produce a state of mind that is clearly ignorant of what God our Father lovingly desires for us and how we are to live in response to that love.

Today we have fallen very far from the path our Savior directed us to follow.  But we don’t realize it and therefore can’t appreciate our error.  We don’t and can’t understand what is fundamentally wrong with our world, society, and our own personal lives.  Let me try to illustrate the problem.  Man has been given the gift of intelligence and he has used it to discover, invent, build, and create.  However, and is often the case, this ability to use our intelligence to make this world a better place to live, becomes misguided or misused.  That is because I believe that man’s gift of intelligence, first and foremost, should be used in conjunction/communion with his love for God and his fellow man, if not, if we use our gift not in communion with God, then sad to say even our best intentions become polluted.

 Unfortunately, our physical world is not currently under the dominion of God.  Yes…the kingdom of God is at hand and within us but the physical kingdom of Satan surrounds us in all of its evil manifestations.  And thus, we can be misled, by Satan, to use our God given abilities to support his cause, just like in the Garden of Eden.  However, our pride often keeps us from acknowledging this.  Instead we fight and argue about how our actions are good and noble, all the while; we are further turning our hearts and minds away from our Creator and turning instead into the darkness and loving it.

What are we to do?  How do we divorce ourselves from Satan’s world?   Do we quit our jobs and give away all our wealth and live in poverty?   Or do we deny ourselves any pleasures and wait in eager anticipation of death?  How do we keep our focus on Our Lord while living in a cesspool of evil?

First off, I believe that man has been hard-coded with the same makeup as Our Creator.  Yes…we are created in His image.  And therefore, we don’t simply die and shrivel up when things are bad.  We have a strong desire to love.  Again, this is hard coded into our makeup.  This cannot be denied.  We also desire to be joyful and at peace, another hard-coded bit of our makeup.  This all comes into direct conflict with Satan’s plan of our destruction and since he cannot change our makeup he needs to substitute these thing like love, joy and peace with his own diabolical substitutes.   Let me illustrate:

   God’s Gift            |              Satan’s Substitute

                                Love                                    Sex, Hedonism
                                Joy                                       Financial Riches
                                Peace                                 Alcohol, Drugs, and the things listed above.

Unfortunately for Satan his substitutes do not provide the same results as God gifts.  Instead, anger, frustration, envy, pride, suicide, alcohol/drug addiction, divorce, rape, murder are just a few of Satan’s side effects.  In Satan’s world we are ruled by fear and desire.  What if I lose my job?  What do I need to do to make the most money I can?  Why can’t I do what feels good, I’m not hurting anybody?

However, in God’s kingdom we are ruled by love with a spirit of service and sacrifice.  What can I do to help others?  How can I be more Christ-like?  How do I pick up and carry my cross every day?

Two completely opposite paths, one that seems to be logical and sensible and the other that seems to be stupid and foolish.

Read - 1 Corinthians - and listen to what Paul wrote about the subject.

Peace

When I was only a young boy in a Catholic grade school in Philadelphia, possibly in sixth, seventh or eighth grade, our teacher, a nun, played for us a newsreel on an old reel to reel projector.  The newsreel was a documentary on the liberation, by American soldiers, of a nazi concentration camp.  It’s was either in the late 60’s or earlier 70’s when I was between the ages of 11-14 years old.

As a child, in those days, I had watched plenty of scary movies with Hollywood monsters like; Frankenstein, Wolfman, and Dracula, and even though they scared me a little I knew they were only make believe.  However, what I saw from that projector that day, horrified me beyond anything I had ever seen before; emaciated bodies, expressionless faces, of men, women, and children who were apparently treated worse than animals.  These were the lucky ones; they had escaped certain execution from the gas chambers, firing squad or whatever other method of execution the nazi’s had cooked up.  Then the image, that is forever burnt into my conscience, of a bulldozer pushing a pile of dead, emaciated bodies into a big hole in the ground.   A feeling of horror came first, and then a sickening feeling began to grow in the pit of my stomach, and finally this evil malaise extended throughout my body.  It was then, that I felt as if my life, was a nightmare, that I was just awoken into.  The Hollywood monsters were nothing compared to these real life monsters that perpetrated this evil.

Nothing in my life seemed the same to me after that.  I now realized that I lived in a world where everyday people could do this to other people – to me and my family.  I did not wish to live here anymore.  I wanted our family to get away, as fast as possible from this house of horrors.  What a childish thought.  The petty issues, rivalries, competitions, strivings, pride, egotisms, bullying, vanities, and every other type of BS that goes with this modern lifestyle just seemed to exacerbate my desire to simply disappear from this cruel world.  I didn't want to play the game anymore.

It was then I realized too, there was no escape, this was the reality of my life, of everybodys life, and I simply had to push forward and live my life, just like everybody else, in the manner my experiences taught me to - SURVIVE.   I did not despair I learned to ignore.  Over time though, you can only ignore for so long.  At some point you will come face-to-face with the bad elements in this life.  What then was the answer to facing the bad element?

War.  That word has haunted me ever since.  War.  The final solution when all other solutions fail.  War.  That, which kills, wounds, cripples millions of people in order that others may live – so they may have children – in order that they may kill or be killed, someday, so that others may live – so forth and so on.  War.  War.  War.  It was simply an integral and natural part of life like having children, going to school, or having a job.   War.  It is what we as humans have been perfecting for thousands of years.  It is not to be questioned or feared…it is our fate…kill or be killed…that is the hand we have been dealt.

On the other hand, acts of kindness, lending a hand, sacrificing and serving others, giving your time, talent and treasures to build the city of God, this is what Jesus taught us to do – to follow.  This is how we find peace – in a world filled with war.  Not through strength of arms but through the strength of our faith.  True peace comes from God.  This present world is not to be feared.  Instead our focus is on love – our love of God, our families, friends and those who have been misled by this broken world.   His peace will come to you, if you repent of your sins, love and follow Him.

May His peace be with you!